Old Highway 399, Part 1: Ojai Freeway (CA 33) in Ventura

There is nothing like a route that ends at the sea, and US 399
is no exception;
US 399's southern terminus has always been the
City of San Buenaventura in
California, better known as Ventura, the county seat of Ventura county
(753,197 [2000]), with a population of 106,744 [2006]. Ventura traces its
history back to the famous Fr Junipero Serra (see US Highway 395 Part 2 for his biography and
his original mission in San Diego), who founded the Mission de San Buenaventura
at the mouth of the Ventura River
in 1782. San Buenaventura is the Spanish name for the Franciscan
St. Bonaventure, a 13th century Catholic theologian and philosopher who
was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Sixtus V in 1588. This mission
was Serra's last; only a small portion of the mission remains today along
Main Street (old US Highway 101) a couple blocks east of old US 399 on
Ventura Avenue (Ventura Ave is in Part 2). After
California was ceded to the United States with the 1848 Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, the region, regarded as relatively difficult to access
by transport in those days, remained the domain of local landowners and
squatters even after the incorporation of the modern city in 1866.
One of these landowners was railroad tycoon Thomas Scott, who sent
his assistant Thomas R. Bard westward to handle his holdings; Bard, in turn,
established the local oil industry with the Union Oil Company in 1890,
over which he presided; Union Oil was the source of the original Union 76
gas brand, became the famous Unocal during a 1983
corporate reorganization, and is today now part of Chevron (or, as some
prefer, the former Standard Oil of California). The original Union Oil
offices in Santa Paula still stand and are a state historical landmark.
At their peak, the Union Oil fields in Ventura produced some 90,000 barrels a
day, and many are still in operation. Oil is a constant theme along US 399,
and we'll encounter many oil fields all the way to the end in Bakersfield.

Despite the presence of the oil industry and the nearby citrus groves
(another original member of Sunkist Growers along with Riverside), the area remained lightly
settled into the 20th century due to the steep and hazardous Conejo Grade
to the south, and the inconsistent beach route north (or, as an alternate,
the difficult Casitas Grade through the inland route to Santa Barbara, today
traversed by CA 150).
The Conejo Grade and the rickety beach routing became the initial alignments of
US 101 in 1928, but US 399 was the first dependably passable inland route
built in the region as the Maricopa Highway (Legislative Route Number 138
Ventura-Coalinga [1935, 1955]), not
completed until 1933 (the particularly stunning and difficult mountainous
portion is the subject of
Part 3 and
Part 4). By 1930 the region barely had over 10,000
residents for the first time, but did not explode to its current size until the
construction of the Ventura Freeway (modern US 101) between 1959 and 1969;
by 1970, the region boasted nearly 60,000.

Although the state had always intended a road from Ventura to Bakersfield
and designated it for survey as early as 1913 (for more about that, see
Part 3),
US Highway 399 was not an original US highway as designated with the first
designation of US highways in 1926. Instead, it was added in 1934 (without
a number initially, as the 1934 California Division of Highways map at right
shows, and eventually assigned US 399 as the third and southernmost spur of
US 99) as a connector from the coast to the inland Central Valley when its
construction was completed;
this portion of the highway was LRN 138 [1935, 1955] between Ventura and
the Cuyama Valley.
The original routing of US 399 in Ventura, as we mentioned above, is Ventura
Avenue and was built more or less in the valley of the now greatly diminished
Ventura River, splitting the western coast ranges with its flow in
antiquity. US 399 follows this routing until Oak View, when it deviates
along a parallel grade and connects to the modern
Maricopa Hwy north of Ojai and
Meiners Oaks. The old surface street alignment connects to the modern and
common routing into Casitas Springs more or less directly, so we will do it as
the second of two parts in this region (i.e., Part 2).

However, the last and latest incarnation of US 399 in Ventura was the
Ojai Freeway, today signed as the southern portion of CA 33 when US 399 was
decommissioned by the 1964 Great
Renumbering.
The California Division of Highways had always intended a freeway to access
the mountain communities, and as such the first segment of the Ojai Fwy opened
as US 399 in 1956 from Stanley Avenue to just north of Shell Road; it was
extended south to the new Ventura Fwy in 1962-3. After US 399 was
decommissioned, the entire portion of US 399 from Taft (Part
6) to Ventura became part of an extended State Route 33
and the Division of Highways continued to expand the now renumbered freeway,
this time opening the northern segment up to Casitas Springs in 1970.
However, the eventual plan to extend the Ojai Fwy up to, well, Ojai, was never
realized; today the Fwy still
ends well short of its namesake and the old surface routing of
US 399 continues to carry the route as modern CA 33 into the hills. A lot of
old signage persists on the Ojai Fwy, which is why we will blow this entire
Part on it.

On NB US 101 (and, on this portion, CA 1),
the modern Ventura Fwy, approaching the Ojai Fwy, with the
first advance signage for the route (now CA 33). US 101 remains a major
highway in California, one of the few US highways that still exists in the
state, let alone sees major traffic volumes. Although truncated south of
Los Angeles, at its greatest extent it went all the way to San Diego as the
southern portion of the Pacific Highway and crossed into Mexico as Mex 1.
There is still a "continuation" in British Columbia as BC 101, although it
has always terminated in Olympia, WA at old US 99/modern Interstate 5, and
remains the primary arterial for the Pacific coast through all three states.

First NB postmile, at PM 0.17, crossing Main St (old US 101). The postmiles
on the SB CA 33 alignment are amusingly inconsistent and we'll look at them
on the return trip. This is roughly where the original 1956 freeway started.

By the way, it is indeed
literally a pipeline, running right under the freeway. Hope they're up
to earthquake code, or there's going to be a big, black, sticky mess someday
and it won't be the freeway asphalt.

El Camino Real bell and signage, commemorating the original King's Highway
established with the founding of the Spanish missions in Alta y Baja
California. Missions were laid out along the linking trails and roads
that made up the King's Highway in such a way that the
next mission was approximately one day's ride on horseback apart, which
remained true into the motor age of the 1920s.
I'm going to talk about this more extensively
someday when I finish my US 101 exhibit (promises, promises), but CA 33/old
US 399 from Ventura up to Ojai is part of the original El Camino Real routing
between San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara; the beach routing of US 101,
despite being called El Camino Real by the California legislature, was
actually not part of the original routing proper. This is one of the
remaining concrete bells dating from the 1960s and 1970s. Oddly, it is no
longer legislatively part of the official route and this one seems to be
maintained locally.

On the southbound side of the freeway are some fascinating little relics, so
we'll look at them, including this aggressively signed left merge and exit
at the Stanley Ave exit. For an extreme example of left merges and exits on
older California freeways, see Interstate 215 in
Old Highway 395 Part 17.

Now for a little fun with postmiles as we play everyone's favourite game,
Where The Heck Does 33 End? Let's start here, just a few hundredths
of a mile (allegedly) before the end as we cross over US 101.

As we loop around, here is a 2005 picture showing the other and more
common way the Division of Highways used to post US highway shields, also
taken in Ventura, this time along US 101 itself. While
it too lacks a background fill, the shape resembles the US shield more than
the distorted look of the one at the south end of the Ojai. This particular
sign at the CA 126 junction
is now down (I found it in a stack of unrelated images), but there are a
few still around, including one in Mountain View on the modern freeway.